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It has been a long-cherished dream of Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender to become a minister in the Cabinet of his favourite leader Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
And his dream has come true on Monday, when he took oath as the minister. He has been a staunch loyalist of YSR and the latter had promised to make him the minister long ago. In 1999, Nagender was hoping that YSR would come to power; but it did not happen. In 2004, Nagender did not get the assembly ticket, thanks to PCC president D Srinivas; and he had to jump to the TDP to win the election. But with YSR becoming the Chief Minister, he resigned from the seat and contested again, but lost the polls to the MIM.
The ultimate chance has come now. He has won the Khairatabad seat and YSR became the CM again. And he grabbed the opportunity without wasting time!
After waiting for two days in the national capital, Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy finally got Madam Sonia Gandhi’s approval for the list of ministers in his cabinet and returned to Hyderabad.
According to the list, there will be 35 ministers in the YSR cabinet, which includes 20 new faces. They are: Pasupuleti Balaraju (Vizag), P Vishawarup (East Godavari), P Satyanarayana and Vatti Vasanth Kumar (West Godavari), Parthasarathy (Krishna), Gade Venkat Reddy, D Manikya Vara Prasad (Guntur), B Srinivasa Reddy (Prakasam), R Venkat Reddy (Khammam), Sunitha Lakshma Reddy (Medak), Sudershan Reddy (Nizamabad), P Ramachandra Reddy (Chittoor), Shila Mohan Reddy (Kurnool), Ahmedulla (Kadapa), D K Aruna, J Krishna Rao (Mahbubnagar), Danam Nagender (Hyderabad), Konda Surekha (Warangal), D Sridhar Babu (Karimnagar) and K Venkat Reddy (Nalgonda).
Of them, only Gade Venkat Reddy held the ministry in the erstwhile Congress regimes and all the others are fresh faces. So, it is a good opportunity to the new comers to prove themselves!
Whenever there is a political party that is formed, it has always been labeled with one mark that can actually turn against its favor in crucial times. So when it comes to the political scenario in Andhra Pradesh, the two major parties that we are talking about is the Congress party and the Telugu Desam Party. Each of them have got their own dark marks and while the Congress has been known for its exorbitant and deep rooted levels of corruption, the TDP is being labeled as a rather caste oriented party or a ‘Kamma’ favoring party.
While the debate has been on for a long time, even this time it is being said that though the Congress has got embroiled in tales of controversies and corruption related issues, they were able to retain power since they came up with some good initiatives. On the other hand, the TDP folks say that there is nothing special about it and they have lost out by just one percent of votes and these belonged to their own community folks. Some of the senior members of the TDP have stated that they were banking on their Kamma vote banks but due to the presence of parties like Lok Satta headed by JP who is also a Kamma, their votes got split and went into a negative account.
They also said that due to the seat sharing basis, some of the noted Kamma contenders were not given a chance and this led to an anti-feeling among the Kamma community heads that resulted in the loss to the party. While this has been their version, the experts say that more than the ‘Kamma’ factor, it is the inability of the Mahakootami to actually drive across their political agendas clearly to the voters and at the same time convince them about their coalition. With an unpredictable KCR around, it was a bit difficult for the voters to see a Mahakootami government standing for long. Despite all these practical hiccups, it is sad to see the Telugu Desam folks still clinging on to the ‘Kamma’ slogan.
It is about time they realize that caste and community feeling does not really work anymore. Perhaps, the example of Chiranjeevi serves as the best one in this context for the TDP folks. At the same time, Congress also must ensure that they wipe away the mark of ‘Corruption’ from their list and if they manage to come out of that, then it is without doubt that they can emerge as a long standing reliable party for the Telugu people.
It is often said that chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy is one man who does not forget those who help him and he does not hesitate to go out of his way to return favors. Right now, something like that is said to be happening between him and Yuvasamrat Nagarjuna Akkineni.
It is known news that during the canvassing time, Nag created a sensation by appearing for ads and speaking about the government projects. Now, it is payback time for YS as per sources. It is heard from them that a gift for Nag is being prepared from YSR and that is giving a seat in Rajya Sabha for his father Akkineni Nageswara Rao.
However, it is yet to be known if ANR will take this offer or not. It has been quite a while since the legendary icon has been seen at cultural events or other film functions. It will not be long before we will know the outcome on this one.
In fact, Nag’s other big deals with Congress government will continue as promised by the latter earlier, say sources.
It is a great victory for Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who fought against all odds -- there were no star campaigners for the party, a united opposition, a sort of non-cooperation from within the party and entry of a new political party, Praja Rajyam, which has a backing of a strong community in coastal Andhra,
The Congress has 157 seats in the 294-member assembly, while the Telugu Desam-led Mahakutami could win only 106 seats, including 91 for TDP, 10 for TRS, four for CPI and one for CPI-M. The PRP remained a poor third with 18 seats. Others could get 13 seats, including two BJP, one Lok Satta, seven MIM and three independents.
The election results have surprised the poll-pundits, who were predicting that there would be a hung assembly in the state this time and that the seats of PRP would be crucial in deciding the fate of the new government.
There are many reasons for the victory of the Congress in the assembly elections. The main reason is that it was completely a positive vote for the Congress government. In the last five years, the YSR government had fulfilled all its promises on implementing welfare and development programmes. The schemes implemented by the Congress government fetched YSR the victory. Thus, there was no anti-incumbency factor this time. The anti-government vote, if any, was split between the TDP and the PRP. Secondly, the alliance with the TRS proved to be a nemesis for the TDP. The TRS has not only fared poorly even in the Telangana strongholds, but also spoiled the chances of the TDP. This was evident from the way the Congress won more than 40 seats in Telangana region. There was no transfer of votes even among the TDP and the Communist parties in many areas.
And the PRP also spoiled the TDP chances. Chiranjeevi's social justice slogan failed to impress the people and he heavily banked on caste polarisation, especially the Kapu factor in the coastal Andhra, hoping to eat into the Congress vote bank. But, it could only eat into the TDP votes, damaging the latter's prospects. Chiranjeevi himself lost his Palacole assembly segment in his native West Godavari district, though he won the Tirupati seat with a meagre margin of around 10,000 votes. Analysts say the TDP would have benefitted much, had there been no PRP in the fray; or there should have been an alliance between the Congress and the TDP.
Finally, the TDP's much-hyped cash transfer scheme and supply of free colour televisions to the poor also have failed to make any impact on the electorate.
YS Jagan has won with triumphant majority from Cuddapah. With happiness filled eyes he said in front of media camera, “Andhra Jyothy and Eenadu should open their eyes at least now. Nothing can dominate ‘praja balam’. Those two news dailies have written many wrong things about me. And now people have showered victory on me. I’m indebted to people of Cuddapah. I serve them for my life time. I don’t take even the center gives me any ministry. I stay only in the state and particularly in Cuddapah”.
Well he uttered the names of Andhra Jyothy and Eenadu as soon as he won the election. Is that an indirect ‘khabaddar’ warning for those two news dailies? We have to wait and see what his game plan will be in coming years.
Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah has won from Janagam with just 44 votes. An EVM didn’t respond for a few hours and that has heated up the tension for quite long time. At last the votes in that last EVM were counted and Ponnala won with just 44 vote margin at last with huge tension.
